Hello everyone, I'm Old Chen.
In June 2021, something small and inconspicuous happened in the Middle East.
"Three months after the U.S. seized the Iranian cruise ship, it sold 2 million barrels of oil on board and made a profit of $110 million."
At first glance, this may seem like another routine act of looting by the Yankees in the Middle East.
But in Lao Chen's view, it reflects a harsh reality:
Although the United States has declined, and although Russia is still stepping up its support for Iran, Iran is still unable to shake the influence of the US military in the Middle East.
The Strait of Hormuz, the main road of world oil trade, is still firmly controlled by the US military.
01
In 2020, the global spread of the new crown epidemic, the economy was depressed, production capacity was shut down, and international oil prices plummeted.
China has also emerged as the biggest winner of "low oil prices".
As China took the lead in resuming work and production, China was almost the only buyer of crude oil from the Middle East in May and June last year.
We also take this opportunity to replenish our strategic reserves.
However, due to excessive consumption, despite China's crazy "bottoming", oil reserves are still stretched.
In recent years, due to the exhaustion of domestic oil fields, our dependence on foreign countries has increased year by year.
From 60% in 2015, it rose to 72% in 2019.
In addition, we imported Saudi oil, surpassing Russia and becoming the first pick.
In addition to Saudi Arabia, Middle Eastern countries account for more than 50% of our oil sources.
More worryingly, these countries have long been under U.S. control and are surrounded by U.S. military bases.
Imagine if, one day, war breaks out in the southeast.
With the current national strength of the United States, the US military cannot personally go down.
But most likely, they will take this opportunity to impose an economic and energy blockade on us.
If we rely heavily on oil, the situation does not change.
At that time, the vast majority of private cars will be reduced to scrap iron.
The huge logistics system will also fall into a standstill.
The consequences are unimaginable.
02
Over the past decade, China has developed three overland oil and gas corridors.
The aim is clear, to get rid of U.S.-controlled Middle Eastern oil.
1 China-Russia oil and gas pipeline
2 China-Kazakhstan oil and gas pipeline
3 China-Myanmar oil and gas pipeline
Overall, although these three oil and gas pipelines have greatly improved China's energy crisis, there are still huge flaws.
Because the stability of these three oil and gas pipelines is heavily dependent on the friendly relations between the three countries and us, as well as the stability of the domestic situation in these countries.
In terms of distance, there has been a lot of civil unrest in Myanmar. Whether Myanmar will be controlled by "anti-China" is still unknown.
03
However, China is not helpless, and the way to break the situation is in the hot track of the capital market - new energy vehicles.
Cars account for 57 percent of China's annual oil consumption.
If all the cars in China are replaced by new energy vehicles, then add the current three oil and gas pipelines.
China will be able to get rid of its dependence on Oil from the Middle East and achieve energy autonomy.
This is why China vigorously develops new energy vehicles.
Of course, the significance of this is not only "energy security".
On the one hand, new energy vehicles promote the card slot of China's economy in the high-end industrial chain.
China's automobile market has always been the pain point of China's industrial upgrading.
The "market for technology" of the past two decades can be said to be a failure.
Foreign brands still dominate the Chinese market.
The transformation of new energy vehicles can be said to be the biggest opportunity for domestic cars to achieve "curve overtaking" for international brands in the past century.
The automotive industry, with a huge industrial chain, will bring millions of high-paying jobs once successful.
If you don't believe it, look at Germany and Japan, where the automobile industry is developed.
In the past few years, in order to popularize "new energy vehicles", the Chinese government has resorted to a magic weapon - "industrial policy".
Although the government has generously invested a lot of money, the development of the new energy industry is also very rapid, but a large number of subsidies have also bred in addition to many fraudulent "demons and ghosts".
However, compared to energy security, this side effect is obviously not worth mentioning.
At present, China's new energy vehicle strategy has been very successful.
First of all, the Chinese market is already the absolute boss of the world's new energy vehicles. Annual car sales are three times that of Germany, a traditional car powerhouse.
Secondly, the technology of China's new energy vehicles is also far ahead.
The core technologies of new energy vehicles are batteries, motors and electronic controls.
A mainstream electric vehicle, the battery cost accounts for about 40% of the total vehicle cost.
Among them, the battery is the top priority.
Speaking of batteries, we have to mention the Ningde era.
One company stands on a quarter of the global power lithium battery production capacity.
The earliest Ningde era, made of mobile phone batteries, belonged to the Japanese atl company.
When founder Zeng Yuqun learned that China would vigorously support new energy vehicles, he decisively founded the Ningde era.
With excellent technology and huge domestic demand, CATL eventually grew into a core supplier of international customers such as BMW and Tesla.
The most worth mentioning is that the Ningde era truly represents "China's intelligent manufacturing".
The 2021 Ningde Times Semi-annual Report is very beautiful.
In addition, in the first quarterly report of 2021, CATL disclosed a "cross-technology license agreement". Japan's battery industry giant TDK pays a technology licensing fee of $150 million a year to CATL.
Seeing this, Lao Chen was full of emotions.
In the past, when we could only engage in labor-intensive industries, we had to pay high patent fees to Europe and the United States, and the large profits were almost taken away by the West.
We can only seek some microblog profits through processing.
Nowadays, not only Huawei, but also the Ningde era has also achieved technology output.
Of course, in addition to the Ningde era, such as BYD, Weilai, etc., are on the rise, they have invariably benefited from China's industrial policy.
On the other hand, the new energy industry will drive a huge industrial chain to help the Chinese economy and complete larger-scale employment.
We all know that the real estate industry is bullish because it is not only highly profitable, but also can drive huge employment.
The same is true for new energy vehicles.
The car itself is a huge industrial chain, and the biggest difference from the traditional car, the new energy automobile industry chain on the basis of the traditional industrial chain to increase the battery industry (including upstream resource development) and motors, electronic control systems.
upstream:
In the entire industrial chain of new energy vehicles, lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite and rare earths are the main minerals used, especially lithium carbonate used in batteries as the key raw materials.
In order to consider the endurance, the requirements for automobile lightweighting are getting higher and higher, and the demand for magnesium aluminum alloys is also increasing.
For example, the layout of China Salt Lake Lithium Resources Development Company.
middle reaches:
The manufacturing process (part/manufacturing/product) is essentially a processing attribute.
Therefore, the cost control ability is the core competitive element, and the competitive barriers of enterprises come from the ability to control raw materials and the speed of technology iteration.
Batteries account for the largest proportion of material costs in new energy vehicles, and are also one of the important reasons why the current price of new energy vehicles is generally higher than that of fuel models of the same level.
In the cost composition of electric vehicles, the proportion of power batteries is about 50%, so power batteries will become the biggest beneficiary link in the outbreak of the new energy vehicle industry chain.
downstream:
It is mainly composed of OEMs (BYD, BAIC BJEV) and wholesale and retail systems.
Aftermarket - car charging, operation, scrap recycling is mainly composed of charging pile manufacturing and operation, vehicle operation, battery recycling and other related enterprises.
At present, the domestic new energy passenger car industry cluster mainly includes Beijing-Tianjin, Yangtze River Delta, Pan-Pearl River Delta, Southwest, Central and other industrial clusters.
The center of the industrial cluster is a high-quality OEM car company, BYD, SAIC, BAIC are currently the core enterprises of their industrial cluster, and they are also the top three car companies in the production and sales scale of new energy passenger cars in China.
As mentioned earlier, the automotive industry, with a huge industrial chain, will bring millions of high-paying jobs once successful.
Today, China's new energy vehicle industry chain has driven nearly 10 million jobs.
A Fortune 500 entrepreneur once said a famous quote:
To be a billion-scale enterprise, we must look at the law of the enterprise, and to be a 10-billion-scale enterprise depends on the law of the industry, and to do a hundred billion and trillion-scale enterprises, we must look at the economic law, the national law, and the world's regulations.
New energy vehicles are such an industry that conforms to economic laws, national laws, and even world laws.
All smart people are seizing new energy vehicles, which is an opportunity that is exploding.